


at the end of the road (i see you and me).

by ftwnhgn



Category: Mean Girls (2004), Mean Girls - Richmond/Benjamin/Fey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Character Study, F/F, First Kiss, Getting Together, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-08
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 17:53:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14878508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftwnhgn/pseuds/ftwnhgn
Summary: “Janis,” Regina starts, so familiar and delightful that it hurts. It hurts.Or how it all pans out.





	at the end of the road (i see you and me).

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I saw the show and was obsessed with the movie. Yes, I ship them.
> 
> Also, if this is stinking with errors I am greatly sorry. This was written all on my phone and I’m also not a native speaker. 
> 
> Title: Niall Horan - You And Me
> 
> (heavily inspired by the new shawn mendes album (especially Mutual) and On The Loose, all wlw anthems)

If she would look back, she’d wonder how it came to this, how the snapshots of her life flying past behind her eyelids would have this as a final destination in store. For now. She has the bone-deep feeling of sureness that her past self would think of her as absolutely batshit if she could see her currently; probably ready to tell herself to change the course she’s been heading down to save herself from the collision. Minimising the damage done to herself, she’s always been good at that when not at a lot other things. Ruining other people’s life has been her past self’s forte but what has been clinging to her through every phase of her life is her ability to do the best out of her worst moments, to give herself some hope and some power in the moments she felt least powerful or brave or happy. There’s still a painting nudged in the space between her bed and the wall, three teenagers in various shades of cold colours. There’s another one on the wall in her apartment hallway, a reminder to stand tall and proud of herself even on the days she has a hard time believing it.  
  
(Her teenage years were a testament to her unhappiness, that hard-rock gut feeling she fought tooth and nail against but that shaped her anyway, influenced her and turned her into a nasty person. She knows that now. She can look back on herself and recall precisely the times when she has pulled the steering wheel too far and ran off the road. There’s some ghosts buried in these places off the road, she learned to not butcher herself over them too much. It’s called a driving force for a reason, but she believes to be past that one.)   
  
Paintings and unhappiness are far away in that moment, the morning light illuminating a different picture that she might feel an itch to paint if she wouldn’t be absolutely sure the repercussions would be nothing but complains and a nearly infamous eye-roll. Collisions still happen, you see, even if they’re executed and met with more softness and a kinder approach. Even if they don’t hurt and only irritate. Even then. Because there will never be a timeline in which they don’t, not with the two of them coming from two sides of the atmosphere and with only magnetic gravity paving a path between them. It’s not the tightrope it used to be, but that doesn’t mean it’s not nerve-wracking. Unpredictable. Exciting. It mostly is exciting and oh, so rewarding. Whenever she manages to turn their collisions into masterpieces instead of the empty train wrecks they used to be, whenever she knows the air between them is filled with unvoiced reconstruction instead of gasoline, then she knows what she’ll get is why she is where she is. Then she knows that what’s waiting for her on the other side is worth the scratches from the ruins and the ashes.   
  
(This is what she learned too: loving someone will always hurt, but it won’t mean that it won’t be worth it. It will be. It is.)   
  
To have someone who never stands still, who’s always on the run and whose mind is so intricate that twenty pry-bars wouldn’t be enough to unlock it; to have someone she always burned for in an unparalleled way. There might never be words for it, not in the darkness of the night, not when she’s on her own, and surely not when she’s right there with her, when there’s a filled space and a golden halo covering the pillowcases like a goddess marking her territory in a world of mortals.   
  
All she can do is hold on to the immortality of it all, to the thrill to be on the run together and not on her own. There’s no standing still, no, but there’s a snapshot-like stillness in quiet moments like this, when she can bend down and brush her fingers through the halo covering the sheets and her yet unpainted lips can leave a trace on Regina’s skin before she has to leave. The stirring of a body that follows, the sight of pale skin (so candid, so real) and words murmured that will echo through her day.   
  
Janis takes it with a gratitude that she hasn’t understood years ago. She takes it with the knowledge of sharing it, of paying in kind.   
  
Because that’s what she learned lovers do. What they do. The bright morning light looks promising as Regina turns away from her again and she gets up to go.

  
  
* 

  
Going to New York wasn’t on the top of Janis’s list per se, but when Damian asked her if she would move with him she couldn’t say no. (She can never say no to him, it’s like a curse and a blessing all in one). Also, it felt like the right step at the time, getting away from Chicago and the abhorrent memories stored inside of it like a dusty, old cupboard you hardly ever want to open, too afraid of dealing with its content. A fresh start tasted better than that, by a long shot. And with Damian she wouldn’t even be alone, they could rely on each other like they always did since they became best friends. Because no matter how often she might feign (or not) disinterest in Damian’s dreams of a life in theatre and his nearly rosey vision of the cut-throat environment he was willing to work in, she always wanted him to achieve said dreams. No matter how ridiculous they might look to others, she never doubted that Damian could do it or deserved to achieve his goals.   
  
So, New York. It was (and still is). A lot of auditions and sometimes even call backs for Damian, as well as some late night honesty on the floor of their crappy and tiny and yet perfect apartment about his fears and doubts that Janis is trained to dismiss with her own genuine belief in her best friend’s ability and talent. And a lot of working in an annoying coffee shop to pay for art school and rent and hoping that this will not all go down the drain once she graduates. She’s bad at customer service and smiling at the rude people with their stupid coffee orders, but she’s good at telling herself that she’s happy with her life. And after a little over two years she realises that what she tells herself is true. She is happy.   
  
_She is happy._   
  
She is happy and Damian is in the ensemble of some revival of a musical she never heard of but it’s on Broadway and he’s putting everything he has into this job, wanting to make this moment in their lives worth it. And she takes off from work for a week to help him prepare for his opening night and to be there for him when it arrives, nervousness like stitches cutting open in the pit of her stomach as she waits for the house lights to go down. (He’s tremendous in the show and she screams the loudest when he takes his bows with the other ensemble members and afterwards they both cry in his dressing room as if they’re 16 again and he’s telling her all about his turn playing the male lead in his summer camp’s production of Legally Blonde.)   
  
It’s too unreal to be true, yet it is. Damian comes home late after his shows every night now and develops a small cult of fans all on his own through the power of social media and Instagram takeovers. She’s still working in the coffee shop but art school finally seems to pay off and go into a direction; she’s got a gallery opening coming up with other students and she’s closer to graduating than she was a year ago and ever since that opening night her mind sweeps back to her high school days. It doesn’t happen often since most of it is pushed into such a dark and deep corner of her mind that she sometimes forgets she even attended. (It’s better this way.) But suddenly she remembers her paintings being on costumes and mediocre pieces of wooden set design and the pride she felt when she first saw the drama club actually doing something worthy of their time.   
  
(She misses this, she realises. To see her art being used like this. She doesn’t further the notion, though, knowing full well rejection waits around that corner and she’s had enough of that in her immediate past to want to dip into it willingly again.)   
  
(But there’s a plan for the future. _There is._ )   
  
The past of her life seems so far away when she’s absorbed in her current life, even when she sometimes gets the bitter taste of memories in her mouth on particular bad mornings or when she looks out of the window of the coffee shop and sees an advertisement for a trip to Africa. Sometimes she notices the shoe shop she’s walking past on her way to work, and she’ll see the red-soled high heels in its window and there will be something burning beneath her tongue; something drumming in her chest (could be her heart, could be not) and she has to look away to get herself in order again. The scar tissue over that bullet wound is still too fresh. Or maybe it really isn’t, but she’s infinitely bad at dealing with the healed pain in these moments, forgetting that she healed at all.   
  
She doesn’t change her route though, not even when Damian tells her she’s being ridiculous and “more obnoxious than Cher, and you know that I love both of you, but that just needs to end”. His honesty will never not be refreshing.   
  
Nevertheless, the car-crash drum of her heartbeat returns a full month after their conversation and her last departure with the shop window, a sick sort of anniversary she doesn’t think she needs. It’s a long and busy line in front of the counter and she’s been on edge since she came straight from her class to work the lunch rush and has been avoiding eye contact and conversation with every single person for that exact reason. Janis has just written down some teenage guy’s order and put the cup aside when she turns back towards her next customer, eyes already fixed on the new cup in her hand.   
  
“A black coffee please, as large as possible. With a splash of soy-milk.”   
  
Janis first instinct is to scrunch up her whole face at the ridiculousness of that order (which she does) and the one right after that is to cut through every single vein that’s connecting her heart with the rest of her body to function. It’s cliché but she’d recognise that voice in a sea of millions, the high pitch and the soft tone with a blade of steel hiding right behind it. Her eyes go up from the cup and it’s really not a dream and she’s not having some sort of exhaustion-induced vision because there is Regina George standing in front of her with only a wooden counter separating them and Janis feels like her pre-teen self all over again.   
  
“ _Oh,_ Janis.”   
  
At least the sudden level of awareness appears on both sides and Janis would genuinely appreciate it even if she wouldn’t feel like her brain turned into a brick in her skull while her eyes can’t stop staring at the woman in front of her. At Regina. Regina. Who’s wearing a slim-cut leather jacket and a white crop top underneath and whose hair is a bit shorter and darker now, not much but enough for Janis to look at it for too long and realise she can see Regina’s actual natural hair colour.   
  
Regina, who’s staring at her in return, just as dumbfounded but way better at hiding it. She’s always been better at hiding it. Some things just don’t change, no matter how much time passes.   
  
They haven’t seen each other in over two years and Janis wants to smack her head against the countertop because things like these only happen to her. Where there was shiny scar tissue is now a fresh impact wound, a bomb gone off in the left part of her chest and all she can do is let it happen as she’s limited to her position behind that stupid counter.   
  
“Black coffee. Soy-milk,” Janis repeats then, after what feels like a lifetime of mutual staring and mutual silence that started to turn embarrassing and reminiscent of their last year of high school. It’s easier to focus on the task at hand, to already separate this situation into work and the person before her. It will help her later when she will completely dissociate herself from the memory.   
  
“ _Janis,_ ” Regina repeats and it’s not soft anymore. It sounds nearly annoyed but more than that it sounds pleading. It sounds sad, even. And Janis notices this because she learned to read Regina George like a book, a trial and error the whole first part of her life was centred around and just because she failed often enough doesn’t mean she can’t succeed once or twice. Regina is so open right now, so vulnerable that it makes Janis catch her breath. Because this whole thing is just wrong and out of tune.   
  
She doesn’t reply though, just takes a step back after handing the cup to her colleague to get the order over with and watches Regina out of the corner of her eye. Her stomach still feels like it’s filled with lead and her heart is beating so frantically fast and loud, she’s not sure if she’ll have a panic attack in the next five minutes or an aneurism. Maybe both. Probably both.   
  
Regina gets her order and when Janis finally feels like she can breathe again, she hears the “It was nice to meet you, Janis” directed at her before Regina turns around and leaves. She already knows she will pick apart how Regina says her name, how she shapes the vowels and the sound of it and how it sounds so different now than it used to sound back then. It’s void of any venom or spite and Janis excuses herself to hide in the bathroom to call Damian and vent to him over the cracking phone line once she is sure that Regina is out of her sight for good.   
  
Panic attack it is.

  
  
* 

  
Regina returns _every_ single day. It’s not like Janis is there for it every time, but her colleagues freely share with her the stories of their new favourite regular’s visits to their store. The order seems to stay the same every time and when Janis is not in Regina asks when Janis will be back and then nod to herself and leave it at that and Janis churned over that fact alone through two full lectures. When Regina is coming in while Janis is working she tries her best to act as unaffected as possible, to act like everything she buried after she moved away is not coming back in full force to bite into her heart with sharp teeth. (Wolves, it’s wolves. Regina is one too, after all. Regina’s biting into her again.) She’s fantastically failing though, if the curt smiles Regina started to give her after the first three weeks of this ordeal are anything to go by. And Janis feels entirely stupid, more idiotic than before since her heart can’t remember all the shit that went down between Regina and her while her brain can’t stop yelling about all the horrible things they did to each other.   
  
She feels chased, in a way. Like Regina is pulling her hunter-and-prey mentality whenever they’re across from each other. It’s not making this any easier to handle, or nicer. No, it’s not nice.   
  
(But it starts to become thrilling, Janis can’t lie to herself about that.)   
  
Regina seems softer now, her edges having turned into smooth lines and her toxic power more of a radiating confidence. It’s still intimidating, or can be to some people, Janis has no doubt about that but not to her. From what she’s witnessed in the past weeks Regina is even quieter in her demeanour than before but more open, more giving. There’s warmth where there used to be poison only and it’s so unlike the Regina Janis has etched into her memory that she sometimes forgets it’s the same woman in front of her, the same person that ruined her life so early on and then again and that she hurt just as bad in return.   
  
Damian laughs about that a bit when Janis tells him, calling it the “pain parade” or something along those lines and reminding Janis that she either has to make a move or flee the country when she doesn’t want to deal with Regina’s presence in her life. Quitting her job doesn’t seem a realistic enough solution for Damian and she gets it; he knows her life well enough to know that unless Janis would leave New York to become, say, a sheep herder in Iceland she won’t get rid of Regina again. They found each other in godforsaken New York, they’ll find each other anywhere. She knows it, Damian knows it too and Regina undoubtedly does as well. She’s always been perceptive like that, focused.   
  
Janis still thinks about the option of her head meeting the hard edge of something in sight because the conversation stirs up what’s been coughed up for a while now, the ugly mess of emotions and feelings she has for the blonde woman and how they usually have the tendency to fuck up Janis way too easily. Effortlessly, maybe. She’s reminded of wolves again and how they claw at their prey until there’s no use to defend yourself and then her mind drifts to the sharp eyes that trace her own movements from across the room and how they know her own do the same in return. She doesn’t sleep well that night or in the next ones and when she does, she dreams of school gymnasiums burning down and Regina dancing in the middle of it like she doesn’t care, smiling when she notices Janis is watching her.   
  
In true movie-fashion Regina stands outside the glass doors of the horrendous coffee shop Janis calls her work place. She’s wearing the leather jacket again and something made out of lace and mesh in a dusty pink accompanied by black leather pants and high heels Janis doesn’t have any memories of except for seeing (and hearing) them whenever Regina leaves with her coffee in hand. Her hair touches her shoulders in soft waves and her lips are painted a signal red and Janis feels the urge to press her own against them to see if the vibrant shade of red would leave traces on the nude tone she’s wearing today. Like art.   
  
They stand in front of each other again and Janis’s hand is curled into a fist around the strip of her backpack and Regina’s still looking at her and the breathlessness seems to plan a return. Janis feels overwhelmed with so much of Regina’s attention being focused directly on her, so she fixes her gaze on a point across Regina’s shoulder to watch an old lady walk her dog down the street. It’s easier to waste her breath on that than to not breathe at all.   
  
“Janis,” Regina starts, so familiar and delightful that it hurts. It hurts.   
  
For the first time since Janis heard her name out of Regina’s mouth again, she replies though. “Yes?” The rabbit hole might have a long way down, but falling into it only takes a second and a look back into Regina’s face.   
  
“I was horrible to you. Like really horrible,” Regina says, directly looking at Janis with her razor-like eyes and that blush on her cheeks that betray the essence of innocence she’s radiating since Janis met her again.   
  
“You were,” Janis agrees and can’t quite believe it, the way Regina seems to wrap herself around the truth of her actions. Belated, but still. She should do the same.   
  
“I was pretty shitty to you too. I’m sorry for that. I don’t think I ever told you that directly,” she adds to her previous statement and it brings the tiny smile back to Regina’s face and Janis feels like she’s free falling now with no way to go but down. Isn’t it always down?   
  
(She doesn’t care. She craved this too long and too immensely.)   
  
“You were,” Regina repeats her own words back to her. “Do you want to have coffee sometimes? You know, to start fresh?”   
  
They don’t get coffee, but they talk all through the night on the couch in Regina’s living room and Janis misses one of the few classes she still has to attend because she’s so tired. But there’s a new number saved in her phone and the kick-drum in her chest finally doesn’t suffocate her anymore whenever it starts.

  
  
* 

  
The silence is a little nauseating. Not in a scary way but in a way that makes Janis uneasy, though that only started ten seconds ago after she got up from the kitchen table to take the plates back to the sink. With her back turned Damian and Regina fell into a mutual silence, which might be a first in her whole life since they’re both the most expressive people she ever came across (it should tell her something, but she can’t think about that now). And it’s not like she’s in a different room and they can hide the obvious and awkward tension in the room, no, Janis is only two feet away from them and suddenly it’s turned into literal Silent Hill over there. Which makes her want to scream because if this night turns out to go bad, she might as well just throw her phone into the blender at work. And Damian promised her to make an effort and to remain non-judging after she said she’d want him to meet Regina again, like the newer version of her. Regina 2.0. _Adult Regina._   
  
And Regina promised the same thing, more or less because it’s still hard to make her promise things even if they seem easy or manageable. Her new distrust in people  gives Janis’s cynicism a run for its money. But she’s also been more scared of this meeting than opposed to it and Janis can understand that, Damian’s obviously never been Regina’s biggest fan and would always side with Janis, but that’s just one more reason for Janis to have them sit at one table and not tear each other’s throat out.   
  
Right now she’s sure this will not happen with all the silence and all, but she’s about to tear at one of them. They make it hard to make her idea seem like a good one.   
  
Yeah, she still wants to scream. And Regina has given her these looks ever since Janis opened the door for her and Janis doesn’t know what to make of them. They’re intense and not in the mean way, really not, rather they make Janis want to hide out in Damian’s room because there’s a confrontation hiding under Regina’s blue eyes that Janis is not ready for - or is sure of reading it the right way. That would just turn this into an even worse situation.   
  
And Regina keeps looking at her like that, ignoring the way Damian looks between them and also ignoring the way Damian pointedly sat across from her over dinner while Janis squeezed in somewhere between Regina and the wall of their tiny excuse of a kitchen. It’s not helping this night at all. Or her.   
  
Ever since Regina came back into her life and they started to hang out again, it’s like her whole mind shifted back about four gears and into the sort-of stupidity she dealt with about five years ago. Or even longer. It surely is longer but she is not going to examine that, not when she let the past crash while she stepped away from that burning pile of memories and feelings. She’s passed this, yes, but it doesn’t stop to awaken some of the emotions she’s been longing for for a while now. Something she has been looking for in other women but couldn’t quite, always feeling like the needle to pinpoint them was just off a bit, just out of sync with where it’s supposed to land. Just too safe to give her that sense of intensity and joy she’s looking for ever discovering that relationships might be possible for her.   
  
(They’re not Regina. That’s the missing point. They’re _not_ Regina. She feels like she’s suffocating under that realisation and the silence of the other two people in the room and that she might have fallen a bit for Regina. Again. _Again_ .)   
  
“I brought wine, you know. We could drink it,” Regina proposes out of the blue then, stopping Janis’s epiphany and breakdown right then and there, and maybe that’s for the better. “Damian, you’re in _Anything Goes_ right now, right? How is that? A colleague saw it two weeks ago and he’s been raving about it ever since.”   
  
Janis turns around to stare at the scene that is now unfolding in her presence. Damian lights up like a fresh theatre marquee and Regina leans forward with her elbows on the table while he starts to talk about some backstage shenanigans that happen between the men’s and women’s dressing rooms. He’s animated and vivid and right in his element and Janis gets three glasses and the wine Regina brought over. It’s white and when she sits down after pouring everyone a glass Regina’s asking Damian to retell the summer camp story they all heard twenty times before.   
  
(The full day of laughter after he booked _Anything Goes_ was a given, of course.)   
  
Janis’s feet are propped up on her chair and her shins are brushing Regina’s sides whenever Regina leans back to take a sip of her drink. Sometimes she looks over at Janis and smiles at her, that curt and fleetingly soft smile again that makes Janis want to pick at every wound Regina ever left on her, and then she’ll tune back in to talk about how none of her colleagues know the difference between a good and practical winter coat and, say, “Ferragamo”. Janis only has a vague inkling what she’s talking about but Damian is all in with her and talking about the horrible fashion he has to endure during award season and that every leading man on Broadway only ever wears gym shorts in the summer.   
  
“You always had an eye for how people dress,” Janis says absentmindedly after Damian excuses himself to the toilet and the sudden silence isn’t fueled by the tension between Regina and him anymore.   
  
Regina turns her head, blond hair falling over her shoulder with the movement and Janis’s eye follow the motion.   
  
“Thanks. I thought I might go into corporate business or politics, but I wanted to do something that I want to do for a long time,” she explains and although Janis has heard this before she nods anyway.   
  
Her hand reaches out to touch Regina’s shoulder, nails going over the material of the patterned top she’s wearing. It looks expensive. But it also looks nice. Janis decided that she likes it when she saw Regina in it three weeks ago on a Tuesday for lunch.   
  
“I could see you cutting the balls off of some of these marketing guys,” Janis muses, a laugh at the edge of her throat at the image of Regina bossing some white-haired guys in tweed suits around. “No offence.”   
  
Regina does laugh at that, quiet and a little bubbling up like she’s been holding it back for a few minutes now. Which can’t be because she’s been laughing plenty about Damian’s stories. “None taken. And you’re not wrong.”   
  
There it is, some slivers of the power and understanding Regina had (and has) over the world to actively manipulate it in the way she wanted and needed. And it says everything Janis needs to know about the Regina who sits next to her, who’s in front of her. She still has that quite power simmering right below her surface, but she’s not using it to hurt people anymore or to push herself above them to manifest herself as a better individual, a more worthy one. She still uses it to command a room, but only to make them listen to her instead of brushing her away or writing her off as a stupid blonde (which couldn’t be further from the truth).   
  
“I know I’m not. I always knew you, Regina,” Janis replies, eyes flicking from Regina’s own ones to her lips and back up. Her hand’s still curled in the fabric of Regina’s shirt. “For better or for worse,” she adds with a rueful smile.   
  
Her heartbeat is hammering away in her chest, kick-drumming again in a volume that surely must be audible to Regina too. Her past self hasn’t felt like this, not so much and so anxiously and not with such a flame of hope trying to fill the holes that were left years ago. It’s nearly positive, nearly makes her lean in to try a stupid thing once and for all. She’s sure that Regina can read it all from her face since she’s not trying to hide it anyway.   
  
Why should she? Regina already did the worst she could do on her. They went there, they were there. They know how to tear each other apart.   
  
“For better or for worse,” Regina echoes. “No matter what anyone said. No matter what _I_ did.”   
  
All they do is look at each other, Janis worrying her bottom lip between her teeth because she’s so overwhelmed with it all that she doesn’t know what to do. Her own feelings are running havoc and Damian is taking an awful long time on the toilet and in all the years she’s knows Regina the woman never looked better than right in that moment in the bad lightning of Janis’s kitchen.   
  
“Can I?” Regina asks then, leaning forward and into Janis’s space, mirroring herself from her conversation with Damian.   
  
The air in the room doesn’t seem to thicken, neither does it feel like there’s some sort of electricity between them, yet Janis feels like she’s burning up and suffocating if she’s reading this situation the same way Regina did and if she won’t be able to kiss her in the next two minutes.   
  
“Yes,” Janis confirms and even before she can nod Regina’s hands are on her face and she’s leaning fully over to kiss Janis.   
  
It’s not magical either as it is in movies, but there’s waves of tension pouring out between them as their lips slide against each other, as Janis can see Regina close her eyes and she does the same thing while her fingers stretch the geometric pattern on Regina’s shirt in ways the designer of it surely didn’t have in mind when he created it.   
  
For all there is to say, it’s a good kiss. But what makes it so much more, what makes Janis want to curl into this feeling and trap this moment to stretch the seconds out into infinity, is that Regina wants it as much as she wants this. It makes her smile when they break apart and when she opens her eyes again Regina smiles too, wide and joyful and unlike anything Janis has ever seen on her.   
  
Janis decides to kiss it right off of her to savour it.   
  
They don’t hear Damian come back in. Janis is not sure he ever did.

  
  
* 

  
“So, she’s your ...”   
  
“Girlfriend,” Janis fills in, swatting Damian’s hands away from where they’re doing something obscene looking in the air in front of him.   
  
“ _Girlfriend_ ,” Damian echoes, deadpan. He’s just staring at Janis now with furrowed brows and lines on his forehead that seem to deepen the longer he thinks about what he has heard. It’s a little ridiculous.   
  
The fateful night is already three weeks in the past and while she’s been fairly sure Regina has been her girlfriend since that kiss in the kitchen, she hasn’t actually come around to let Damian know about it. Or put a name to it together with Regina. After all, it takes two to tango and all that. But she’s been confident about this and about Regina and to let Damian know now that she’s sure is the only logical conclusion. And while his reaction is calmer than she thought it would be (they all really grow up at one point), she’s still a bit weary.   
  
“So, Regina George is your girlfriend. Are you sure about this?” Damian asks her, voice concerned and affectionate at the same time and he’s the only person Janis knows who can make her feel better and worse in one breathe. He keeps her real. “I just don’t want you to run into something that can end badly. You and Regina never had the best ... relationship.”   
  
That’s saying it lightly, and mildly. Considering Damian was there when Janis was at her lowest point because of Regina and has stayed with her through everything that followed after, even the revival of that exact same first time he picked her up from. Of course he’s worried. Janis would be the one to be concerned if he wouldn’t be.   
  
“I’m sure about this. I _am_ ,” she tells him, taking his hand in hers. She’s looking at him and cracks a smile when she says, “and if we ever break up for whatever reason, you can storm into her office and yell at her for destroying my life for a third time.”   
  
He laughs at that, loud and obnoxious, and Janis joins in until they’re both out of breath and she has tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. It’s freeing in a way to make fun of the situation like this, easing themselves into something new. Because it’s new for Janis too, to be able to channel her feelings for Regina into something positive, something that would be reciprocated. She never thought this would happen in real life. She never thought Regina would ever see her in that way, want her in that way.   
  
(Yet here they are. Here they are.)   
  
“I won’t do this, for all of our sakes, but I’m glad you gave me the permission to fantasise about it,” Damian finally replies after they’re both done with laughing until they’re stomachs hurt.   
  
“I want to make this work,” Janis tells him them, quieter than before and more serious, and she means it. This is the first time she ever feels positive about Regina and about what they are and what they have developed. For the first time there’s actually something healthy that’s between them and Janis doesn’t want to fuck this up because of past mistakes or past grudges. “I feel good about this. About her.”   
  
Damian looks at her again for a long time, or it feels like it’s a long time because neither of them says anything to each other during it. And somehow this feels big, serious, like some of these moments she will remember years from now and she suddenly wishes for Cady to be here too, but she’s somewhere up north with Aaron; and Janis hasn’t exactly told her about Regina yet. But it feels like Cady should be here too, the three of them being present for this monumental switch in Janis’s life.   
  
The buzzing of her phone is breaking the spell of the intensity though and Damian leans back in his seat while Janis looks who’s messaged her.   
  
“Just get your girl and share any progress with me. We’ll figure it out,” is all he says when he can see Janis smile at the screen for a moment before it goes dark again.   
  
“I don’t deserve you,” she tells him as solemn as possible, her fingers still curled around his hand.   
  
Damian nods and grins again. “Yes, you do.”

  
  
* 

  
It’s weird to stand behind the counter at not immediately feign ignorance once Regina walks up to it; despite the length of their relationship and how Janis can never not let one corner of her mouth wander upwards when she sees the blonde. It doesn’t seem to transition to her work ethic though, if her casualness whenever Regina orders is anything to go by. Janis writes down her order, hands it over and answers when Regina asks her when her shifts ends as if Regina doesn’t have it written down in her meticulously organised Apple calendar on her meticulously organised iPhone. (Janis likes to make a little bit of fun of it because their phone-using habits couldn’t be further apart and 65% of the time Regina complains how Janis doesn’t use her phone how it should be used. It’s a riot.)   
  
“I can pick you up,” Regina says as she’s waiting for her order to be ready and Janis has selfishly decided to take a break. The small favours of not working at such a big brand like Starbucks.   
  
Janis shrugs, knowing that Regina already made her mind up about it and there’s hardly a lot she can say about it. “Sure. But didn’t you have a meeting with that lawyer-guy in the evening?”   
  
Regina frowns for a second before a soft smile spreads over her features. She’s wearing peach-coloured eyeshadow today, one of the colours Janis likes on her the most. Janis can’t help but notice that right now.   
  
“I pushed that to tomorrow. I’m free all evening,” she answers and her hand reaches out to take her coffee from on of Janis’s coworkers without tearing her eyes from Janis. It’d be quite impressive if Janis wouldn’t be in this situation about every day.   
  
“Okay,” Janis says. She has the urge to reach out and take Regina’s hand in hers. It’s romantic and stupid and affectionate and she can’t help but want it. But they’re not the people who do PDA, least of all Janis herself, so she suffices herself with nodding and keeping an eye on the clock to check how much of her lunch break Regina is wasting with staring at her. It’s gotten longer and longer in the past months.   
  
“Do I need to wear something fancy? Because I don’t have anything here to change into except for what I left the house in this morning. And that wouldn’t cut for any anniversary dinner,” she asks, taking Regina by more surprise than she thought at first. There’s five minutes of her lunch break left and Regina needs to leave now to not be late.   
  
“No, just you will be enough,” Regina replies, but stopping herself from taking a sip of her coffee to stare some more at Janis. “Wait. Did you sneak a look at my calendar? This was supposed to be a surprise.”   
  
Janis laughs at that, her coworker probably glaring holes into her back for drawing this out way longer than it’s appropriate during a lunch rush, but she couldn’t care less. Not when Regina’s confused face is making her whole day ten times better than before.   
  
“No. But I can keep track of dates,” she answers.   
  
Regina touches her hand once before she turns around to leave. Janis can see her smile reflecting in the glass of the front door.

  
  
* 

  
Four years is a long time in any prospect of a life, that’s 48 months in total and that concept seems even bigger in the grand scheme. It’s the number of course, but that doesn’t make it seem less immense. Or less frightening. Because it is just that: frightening and crazy and big. And if someone would have told her that she’ll be able to make the same person stay with her for more than four year and actually wanting to do so, then she’d have flipped them off; for sure. Flipping people off in your mid-twenties might make her look childish but it doesn’t make it less satisfying. (It always is _so_ satisfying.) And sure, there was a fight that nearly caused her to break up and there are arguments and all, but she’s applauding herself and Regina for sticking through it and working things out instead of ripping each other apart.   
  
Because they still both argue like lives are on the line and they sometimes won’t talk to each other for half a day and she’ll hide out in Damian’s dressing room when she’s supposed to be back in her studio to create something that has been commissioned about two months ago already and Regina will look at pleated pants for over two hours instead of getting it done in half of that time, but it’s not cracking the ground foundation they laid down years ago. It’s not destroying them.   
  
Janis has the inkling that not a lot could destroy them anymore. She likes to believe she’s right in that regard, if not in most other things in life and the world. But she knows Regina so well now, knows her better than she might even know herself, and that means enough. That means a lot, maybe even everything.   
  
(It only means everything because it’s the same thing the other way around. There’s no one who knows her in the way Regina knows her now.)   
  
They’re still there for each other when the sun sets and it gets dark outside and it gets ugly and the streets smell more like air pollution than tar and people turn meaner than they were the hours before. And that’s what counts, that’s why all the hassle is worth it.   
  
That’s the thing. Their thing. _Now._   
  
So, when she unlocks the door and Regina’s already there, dressed in her impeccable outfit that Janis had to leave too early for to see until now, and she can throw her bag into the bedroom and then kiss Regina in greeting, it’s different than what she thought her life would be at this point. Much more different. But it’s not bad.   
  
It’s better. And she can’t help but be grateful for all the times she ran herself off the road. Without it she would never have landed here and been content here, would have had the guts to make amends with herself and with what happened; she feels like she’s right where she belongs now and certainly her past self can appreciate this, too. Because she’s happy.   
  
“You’re late,” Regina says.   
  
Janis nods and grins, her hand finding Regina’s easily despite the dim light. “I am. But I’m here, aren’t I? For better and for worse. You’re not getting rid of me that easily, George, you must know that by now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Happy pride month. Who also relates to Janis way too much?
> 
> Thank you you for reading and you can leave a comment if you want, I love to be yelled at. Or chat with me on tumblr (moonmccoy), it’s always a thrill.
> 
> friendly reminder: you are loved, you are enough and you will achieve great things. you are right just the way you are, a living and breathing thing. keep going.


End file.
